[From Bruce Abbott (971206.1205 EST)]
Richard Kennaway (971206.1045 GMT)
Bruce Abbott (971205.2000 EST)
Today most educated
people acknowledge that thoughts, emotions, perceptions, memories,
consciousness, and such arise from the physical operation of the brain and
will ultimately be understood purely in terms of physical processes
operating in the brain.
They may pay lip-service to the idea, but in practice, a lot of people,
including a lot of scientists working in the area, still seem to think
in terms of a naive Cartesian split between "psychological" and
"biological" phenomena as belonging to different universes.
Yes, you're right; I overstated the case. However, most accept the idea
that psychological processes have a great deal to do with brain processes.
Otherwise it is hard to account for the obvious effects of disease-produced
delerium, anti-psychotics, anti-depressants, anti-anxiety agents, brain
damage and disease, "recreational" drugs, and so on. Disturb the brain,
disturb the mind.
It seems quite rare for the idea to be taken seriously, with all its
implications, that the human mind is a physical activity of the human
brain.
Bill Powers (971206.0654 MST)
I don't think that idea quite answers the need. You might as well say that
a program is "activity in the circuits of a computer." While that's a true
statement, it glosses over the fact that only some organizations of
activity would qualify as a program, while all others would just be nonsense.
I don't see Richard K.'s statement as excluding organization, and of course,
organization is everything. A watch does not function as a watch if its
parts are removed and reassembled in some random fashion. But I have always
liked the distinction between software and hardware, even though the
computer analogy can be pushed too far, as when one assumes that the brain
is a digital system. The program represents a particular functional
organization based on information currently stored; when the program is run,
the computer "behaves" in a particular way that depends on this organization
and the relevant inputs (as determined by the program) that it receives as
it runs. It is quite obvious that the brain is doing the same, although its
structure and the nature of its "program" differ vastly from those of the
digital computer.
Organization has the same kind of existence that matter and energy have,
but it is a separate existence. Organization can be exemplified in specific
arrangements of matter and energy, but it is not tied to any particular
arrangement, energy level, or pieces of matter. As far as any physicist
could demonstrate, it is nonphysical.
Organization is just an arrangement of parts. That's about as physical as
one can get. However, it is the functional properties of those parts and
not their physical properties that are important for preserving the
organization; this is what makes it possible to realize the organization in
very different physical substrata.
Organization confers properties on the whole that the parts do not have: a
gas behaves as a gas and a liquid as a liquid even though the gas and the
liquid are composed of the same parts (e.g., molecules of oxygen). They are
organized differently. H20 has "emergent" properties that it shares with
neither of its constituent atoms, owing to constraints imposed by the
molecule's organization.
To my mind the most fascinating example of emergent properties, which owe as
much to organization as to the properties of the constituent parts, is life.
The ancient philosopher's "vital substance" that confers life on inanimate
matter turns out not to be a substance at all but a particular organization
of the ordinary matter itself. And the most important feature of that
organization (beyond the ability to self-replicate) is stability against
disturbance, much of which is accomplished via active control.
Regards,
Bruce